[2] Among the school's distinguished graduates are sculptors David Altmejd and Banks Violette, visual artist Lisi Raskin, painters Marc Handelman and Dana Schutz, screenwriter Jennifer Lee and James Mangold, screenwriter and actress Gülse Birsel and directors Kathryn Bigelow and James Gunn.

[5] In 2017, construction was completed on Renzo Piano's 60,000-square-foot Lenfest Center for the Arts, a multidisciplinary academic and performance space on Columbia's Manhattanville campus.

[6][7] In 2021, the School of Arts was the subject of a Wall Street Journal investigative report into prestigious universities that run programs that have lopsided costs for students relative to their expected earnings in the field.

The article further stated alumni carry a median debt of $181,000 USD, "the highest debt compared with earnings among graduates of any major university master’s program in the U.S."[8][9] The School of the Arts' Film Program is well-regarded in the field and offers Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degrees with concentrations in Screenwriting/Directing and Creative Producing.

The playwriting concentration has been heralded by two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Lynn Nottage and Tony Award winner David Henry Hwang.

One of its more notable features are "master classes", four-week courses for writers (as opposed to critical scholars) "designed to stimulate provocative discussions about literary craft and artistic choices."

The writing division also employs prestigious writers as seminar and workshop instructors; in recent years these have included Zadie Smith, Gary Shteyngart, Nathan Englander, Myla Goldberg, Adam Haslett, Jessica Hagedorn, Phillip Lopate, Marie Howe, Eamon Grennan, Paul LaFarge, David Gates, Francisco Goldman, Darcy Frey and David Ebershoff.